In a blow to the bill grinding through the Senate, Howard Dean bluntly called for the bill to be killed in a pre-recorded interview set to air later this afternoon, denouncing it as “the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate,” the reporter who conducted the interview tells me.

Dean said the removal of the Medicare buy-in made the bill not worth supporting, and urged Dem leaders to start over with the process of reconciliation in the interview, which is set to air at 5:50 PM today on Vermont Public Radio, political reporter Bob Kinzel confirms to me.

The gauntlet from Dean — whose voice on health care is well respsected among liberals — will energize those on the left who are mobilizing against the bill, and make it tougher for liberals to embrace the emerging proposal. In an excerpt Kinzel gave me, Dean says:

“This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process, where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.”

Kinzel added that Dean essentially said that if Democratic leaders cave into Joe Lieberman right now they’ll be left with a bill that’s not worth supporting.

Dean had previously endorsed the Medicare buy-in compromise without a public option, saying that the key question should be whether the bill contains enough “real reform” to be worthy of progressives’ support. Dean has apparently concluded that the “real reform” has been removed at Lieberman’s behest — which won’t make it easier for liberals to swallow the emerging compromise.

WASHINGTON: It is symbolic of the Senate's health-care bill that the section titled ''No lifetime or annual limits'' would allow insurance companies to impose annual dollar limits on medical care — meaning that patients in need of expensive cancer treatment, for example, could still be bankrupted.

Democratic health-reform legislation promises everything to everyone — while imposing a series of hidden burdens to make a massive new entitlement affordable, at least on paper. So its authors are in a game of beat the clock — pass the legislation before those burdens are fully disclosed to the public.

The case of annual dollar limits — now being renegotiated after they were finally noticed — is instructive. In the ''reformed'' insurance system, every plan would be a high-end plan, requiring insurance companies to cover people who are already sick and limiting the ability to charge higher premiums for those at higher risk. To avoid going out of business or dramatically increasing insurance premiums across the board, insurance companies want the ability to cap yearly benefits. The Senate bill included this limit, because higher insurance premiums would require greater government subsidies to help people afford them. Cutting off cancer patients helps Congress meet its budget target.

The entire Democratic health-reform effort is now foundering, as its deep bow enters the shallow channel of fiscal reality. And that splash you hear is various groups thrown from the ship to lighten the load. Instead of beginning with affordable, realistic objectives, President Obama and the Democratic Congress set the goal of guaranteed, comprehensive coverage for everyone. This requires a lot more money in the system, which must come from somewhere. Actually, from someone.

One source is the young and healthy who currently take the risk of living without insurance. They would be legally mandated to pay premiums each month. According to the polls, it doesn't bother young people much that they would be forced to subsidize the insurance costs of middle-aged Americans with pre-existing health conditions. We are grateful for young people's indifference.

Another target is older people on Medicare. Health reform that doesn't ''add a dime to the deficit'' assumes large reductions in government payments to doctors and other health-care providers. Last week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a devastating report, saying these cuts ''may be unrealistic'' because they would threaten the fiscal stability of the Medicare system. One in five hospitals, nursing homes and home health providers could be pushed into the red. Many would stop participating in Medicare, restricting access for seniors.

It is an extraordinary political development that Democrats are willing to put Medicare — a program that already faces serious fiscal challenges — at further risk to pay for a new health entitlement. Or maybe they know the risk is minimal, because Congress will eventually abandon this pretense, restore the Medicare cuts and fund health reform with deficit spending.

Whatever the outcome, promises of greater efficiency in delivering health care seem empty. ''In 10 years' time,'' says James Capretta of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, ''even if all of these ideas are fully implemented, the Medicare program would look and operate largely as it does today, which is to say as a fee-for-service insurance model that rewards volume and fragmentation, not integration.''

The final source of funding is taxpayers. In an assault on the wrinkly, the Senate bill includes a 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgery. A larger revenue source is a tax on high-end ''Cadillac health plans.'' It is a problem, however, that many Cadillac plans are owned by people who build Chevys and Fords. Over the years, unions have often taken generous benefits packages in lieu of salary increases. If the Senate approach becomes law, that will have been a poor calculation.

How long before the young and the old, union workers and the millions in desperate need of Botox realize that the health-care free lunch is to be provided at their expense? This may already be happening, with some polls now showing opposition to reform more than 20 points higher than support.

But perhaps the largest reason for this decline is the impression that all these deceptive burdens, risky moves, budget tricks, tax increases and new bureaucracies have been thrown together to meet a political deadline, with little clear idea of how they would affect the health of the nation. Sometimes brain surgery is necessary, but this one is being conducted by moonlight with pruning sheers and chicken wire.
Gerson is a Washington Post Writers Group columnist. He can be e-mailed at mgerson@globalengage.org.

One source is the young and healthy who currently take the risk of living without insurance. They would be legally mandated to pay premiums each month. According to the polls, it doesn't bother young people much that they would be forced to subsidize the insurance costs of middle-aged Americans with pre-existing health conditions. We are grateful for young people's indifference.

Wait until those "young people" actually have to start footing that bill instead of just talking about it and see how fast their tune changes.

President Obama said he likes the Senate health care compromise and wants it passed by Christmas, but he faces a revolt from some liberals who say the health care bill has been gutted to appease insurance companies.

"This is a bigger bailout for the insurance industry than AIG," former Democratic National Committee chairman and medical doctor Howard Dean told "Good Morning America's" George Stephanopoulos today. "A very small number of people are going to get any insurance at all, until 2014, if the bill works.

"This is an insurance company's dream, this bill," Dean continued. "This is the Washington scramble, and I think it's ill-advised."

News flash - Amazing clarity among voters revealed in new poll. Film at 11.

So this "healthcare" bull@#$% is about fixing the "crisis" of "47M uninsured" (that number has since been "reduced' to 30M) at the expense of the 270M insured while leaving 30M uninsured? Liberals can @#$% up a one car funeral.

The actual crisis is that we are stupid enough to let them do this to us.

__________________

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress & the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution,
but overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."

This bill, as it stands now, will wreck Medicare and Medicade within 3 years of it's implementation. Then guess what? The taxpayers get to bail them out...to the tune of trillions.

The fact has always been that TRUE healthcare reform is going to cost trillions....instead of taking a common sense approach to this, and working in steps, what Obama and this Congress will end up doing is taking a historic moment (when the public really WAS willing to look at doing SOMETHING) and destroying the opportunity forever. They should have focused on one problem at a time...instead, like usual, Obama's agenda was TOO ambitious, he tried to fix everything at once, and now just about everyone will end up getting screwed by shoddy half-assed legislation.

It's actually sad...we had a chance to DO something about spiraling costs and the opportunity will be squandered...

WASHINGTON — The liberals' longtime dream of a government-run health care system for all died Wednesday in the Senate, but Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont vowed it will return when the realization dawns that private insurance companies "are no longer needed."

Sanders, an independent and socialist, said his approach is the only one "which eliminates the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste, administrative costs, bureaucracy and profiteering that is engendered by the private insurance companies." His remarks drew handshakes and even a hug or two from Democrats who had filed into the Senate to hear him.

Sanders acknowledged the proposal lacked the votes to pass, and he chose to withdraw it after Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., exercised his prerogative and required Senate clerks to begin reading the 767-page proposal aloud to a nearly empty chamber. After three hours, they were 139 pages into it.

The political theater came as the White House and Senate Democrats sought an agreement with Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., to become the 60th supporter of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul — the number needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.

All the hoopla is smoke and mirrors.... the bills gonna pass.... The Repubs say it will bankrupt the country, the Dems say it will prevent the country from going bankrupt. Unfortunately predictions of what will happen in the future once the bill is passed will be broken down to "he say-she say " by the Dems come election time. Once this bill is passed, the Dems will have "major " artillery come election time... simply based off the fact that they have reformed health care when so many have failed to do so in the past.

__________________A HOUSE DIVIDED WILL FALL TO IT'S ENEMIES;
BUT IN UNITY THERE ARE 6' SUPER BOWLS !!!